Woolworths. Who do you want.. Re specials

I rang Woolworth’s to simply make a comment about their in store stocking procedure. The story goes like this:

I received their online catalogue in the usual Wednesday morning emails. I noticed that my favourite cordial, Bickford’s Lime juice was on “special”, not $4.05 but only $3.00.!! So I decided to stock up on it. I got cleaned up and we drove to Woolworth’s Glenorchy store about 15klms away. I spoke to a young man working there and asked if he could get me a couple of cartons from the store so as not to empty the shelf of the twelve loose bottles on it. He told me that the twelve bottles was all they had in stock……..

Now we are talking about an advertised week long special on this product!!! And they only had twelve bottle in the whole store that catered to thousands of customers. So I quickly grabbed the lot and emptied the shelf.

“When will you have more?” I asked, to be told “when the computer sees we are out and re-orders” FANTASTIC!!!!! So the next customer or three or more that wanted this product BECAUSE it was advertised as on “Special” would be out of luck!!

So I drove to another suburb, Claremont and went into Woolworth’s and had exactly the same experience. I cleaned that store out of Lime juice as well so God help all the other customers. Now if I had got myself ready to go out, driven 20 minutes to a supermarket to specifically purchase an ADVERTISED item to find it was out of stock on the first morning I would NOT have been happy. By the way if you missed out because of me I apologise. (Yes Woollies I know about “rainchecks” but many do not) 🙁

So on returning home with my stash of cordial I rang Woolworth’s to comment. Now I did not just want the “Girl” on the switchboard to fob me off and throw my comments in the bin so I asked for “The person in charge of product distribution” not knowing who else to ask for. I was then asked “What name do you want?” I said I did not know a name and was told that “I can’t put you through unless you have a name”. So I asked for another department declining to say what it was in reference to for fear of being “fobbed off”, same response. This went on for a while until in frustration I asked to speak to John Smith. But evidently John Smith was not at work. So I said I would call back. I then looked up the CEO and board names and rang back using these names. Waste of time again there was no way I was going to get past the heavy bolted steel door that protects all of Woolworth’s management staff from the plebs in the public arena. So at the end of the day I never got to ask, “Why don’t you have a better supply of product in stores at “special promotion” time, well, even at any time, twelve bottles doesn’t go far…… does it?”